Chapter 8Mrs. Rushworth is rather sweet. I like that she learned from the housekeeper and that she paid attention to Fanny -- not through charitable impulse but just because Fanny's interested. A little thing, superficial, but at the same time genuine.
Fffft, Fanny and the chapel. She makes me think of Catherine from
Northanger Abbey and Marianne from
Sense and Sensibility.And here we run into my first real difficulty with Fanny and her very conservative morals. Mary's sentiments regarding the chapel and services are much more in line with my own, and while her expression of them wasn't particularly sensitive to Edmund's feelings as someone interested in becoming a chaplain, my first impulse at Fanny's reaction is to roll my eyes and tell her to lighten up.
Mary and Fanny -- extrovert versus introvert.
Also how annoying flirting can be for the people not doing the flirting. Ahaha oh Mary and Edmund.
I had mixed feelings with that Fanny and Mary and Edmund conversation. My personal church feelings are with Mary's own, but I also feel that Fanny was really excited and Mary was basically a buzzkill. Not for everyone, especially since she was amusing in her expression, but she was harshing Fanny's squee. I've been in Fanny's place - getting excited about something only for someone to damage the experience because they weren't excited - just about other topics that don't necessarily have a moral tinge to them. At least she does recognize that Mary didn't mean to be insensitive, and feels bad for her embarrassment on discovering Edmund's life plan.
Something struck me as interesting with the romantic triangle here and with Julia specifically. Well, two things. The first is how Maria was really very uncomfortable with being hit on by Henry, even though she is already attracted to him and will act on it later. Her discomfort might have to do with that attraction, but it's still there, and Henry had to have noticed it and kept going anyway. And she was helpless to stop it because of how innocent the scene looked. And Julia was inadvertently making it possible.
The second thing is the commentary on internal versus external motivation. In the previous chapter, Julia feels like she should have offered to stay instead of Edmund and doesn't. Here, she feels like she has to talk to Mrs. Rushworth out of politeness. That is, out of the need to not seem rude, not out of consideration for Mrs. Rushworth's feelings and whether she deserves to be left alone. I know that when I do things I feel like I have to do but that I don't want to do, it does make a difference if my motivation is at least partly internal. I need to feel that it's right for me to do what I'm doing, and that it's not mostly because of some unfair situation I can't get out of. Otherwise there will be rantings and whining and misery, even if I keep it all inside.
What amuses me is that Edmund is right, but I don't agree with the text, which I assume is validating his beliefs on the importance of the church straightforwardly. The church and religion is very powerful in my country when it comes to morals and social issues, but I actually hate that and think it's for the worse. (Not that atheism as expressed by the likes of Richard Dawkins is great either. Still.)
Edited (Change of clumsy wording I spotted and to add the first paragraph. ) 2013-06-13 07:48 am (UTC)